Hello, hello, hello! Greetings and salutations, my good ponies, and welcome to the Ponyville Arcade! Name's Bunches O Fun, and I'm the grade-a-number-one pony of games here in this humdinger of a town. My special talent is playing, repairing, and working with game and arcade machines of every shape, size, and variety, and I just of working with those wonderful clockwork gizmos. I just love the smiles on the faces of ponies as they rack up high scores and try to best each other on the machines!
It's always been this pink mare with the green mane's greatest joy to work with arcade machines, ever since I was a wee little filly. I've always been very good at things like pinball games and skeeball, racking up the highest scores on these machines here at the arcade. That is, whenever I could sneak away to the arcade when my overbearing and stubborn mother wasn't watching. She felt I was wasting my time on these machines, playing away the hours that I could be doing something important, like gardening (my cutie mark was a bouquet of roses with a bee... gee, mom did a lousy job of interpreting that one!) But here I am, running the town arcade and providing smiles to every pony who wants to come in here and pop a jangle into a machine.
And ohhhh boy, do we get some interesting ponies in here to play games! Cotton candy loves to come in during her off hours, and tell other ponies how to play the games. Pinkie Pie likes to come here and play the hoofball machines to de-stress from this whole 'Wysteria disappearing' thing, while Kimono comes in for a round of Panchinko to get her mind off of all the 'ghosts' she's seeing around town in her visions. But you wouldn't believe what crazy event Fiesta Flair reserved my arcade for this week...
"Wow, it's so cool that Fiesta's going to hold her birthday bash for Scootaloo here." Starbeam declared, sipping on a soda as he helped me wipe down a pinball machine. "I think this a great opportunity for your arcade to shine!"
"Yeah, I just wish she weren't hanging her pinatas up in here." I tell him with a sigh, checking the flipper pedals on the machine with my hooves. "I mean, aren't the games and her taco dishes enough? Why does she have to mess up my carpet with broken pinata pieces, and falling candy everywhere?"
Starbeam, the awesome stallion with the blue coat and white mane. The ultimate slacker, he's Ponyville's astronomer who's always looking to the stars through his telescope, always dreaming of worlds far beyond our own. He also spends all of his time around here, playing the space-themed games and keeping me company, while he rambles on and on about the glittering stars in the skies above. Maybe that's why I became his girlfriend.
"I wouldn't try to worry too much about it, babe!" He tells me, putting a hoof over my shoulder. "You're games are always going to be a major hit with the ponies of Ponyville!"
I just shrugged and laughed at his response, and we go to enjoy many of the different games in my arcade. He whips my tail at skee ball, having the bigger and stronger muscles behind those stallion hooves to send those balls a-flying up that ramp an into the hole. At the whack a diamond dog game my superior reflexes got the better of him, as I bonk more of those fuzzy fiends in ten seconds, than my much slower boyfriend can snag in a whole minute. And we found some very interesting things to do in the arcade's photo booth... though let me tell you, there is no way any one outside of Starbeam and I are going to see these snapshots.
It was then we turned our attention to the pinball machines, and Starbeam noticed a strange-looking one standing off in the corner all by itself. The lights and music coming out of the thing seemed almost... from another time, telling me this was a very early vintage machine.
"Wow, Bunches! I've never seen this machine in here before." He told me, looking the odd contraption over. "This thing looks so old, where on earth did you get it?"
"I dunno where it came from, I found it in the back of the storeroom along with the other games brought here from Ponyville's old arcade." I shrugged, tapping on the side of the game cabinet with my hoof. "It looked like the thing hadn't been touched in ages, so I took it out, cleaned it off, plugged it in... and what do you know, it did still work!"
"Here, let's give this thing a whirl!" He exclaimed excitedly, popping a token into the slot. "Hey, this thing doesn't except your arcade's tokens, it spit it right back out!"
"Here, let me put it on free play." I reply, messing with the wires underneath the cabinet until credits; 1 popped up on the screen. "There you go, no go ahead and have fun!"
And so Starbeam blasted into the game Nightmare moons revenge.
"Oh No! Little ponies I need your help again!" A motherly voice came out of the machine, clearly belonging to the while alicorn who was currently lit up on the machine's backboard. "My sister has been transformed into Nightmare Moon again, and I need your help to save her!"
Starbeam shot the ball into the play field, then hit hit three bumpers labeled cutie mark crusaders, and immediately the image of three little fillies with capes on lit up and exclaimed "Yay, we've earned our cutie marks!" Then, Starbeam hit the ball up towards a farm with a red barn up in the right-hand corner, and an orange cowpony in a cowgirl hat lit up; "Yee haw, you hit that ball clean into the apple orchard, pardner!" He then sent the ball flying up into a small cottage on the right, where a timid looking little mechanical Pegasus popped out, and said softly; "You scored fifty points, yay!"
"Wow, these are some very interesting characters in this game." I noted, amazed at the detail and quality on the game's artwork. "I wonder why this machine was shoved into the back and forgotten about?"
Starbeam then hit the other small buildings on the table, whacking into a dress boutique, and having a white unicorn yell out. "I'll destroy you for ruining my dresses!" And earned a 'Sugarcube corners free ball', for hitting the ball into a little bakery on the play field.
"Oooo, congratulations, you get a free ball!" An eerily familiar pink mare exclaimed, popping up out of the gingerbread bakery.
"Bunches, did you see that?! That was Pinkie Pie!" Starbeam exclaimed, so shocked that he almost let his ball go down the hole. "Pinkie Pie was in an ancient game that was made before she was even born!"
"Yeah, you're right! And isn't that rainbow Dash?!" I reply in utter shock, seeing the familiar blue pony pop out of a large mass of clouds when Starbeam's ball hit it. "But she's a Pegasus here, that's not right!"
"You hit it my house with that one! You're pinball skills are 200% cooler." The not-Rainbow-Dash exclaimed.
"And that voice, that isn't Rainbow at all!" Starbeam agreed, looking over the board as he lost his ball from a missed flipper shot. "Is this pinball machine possessed or something?"
And it was at his mention of possession, that I notice that a lot of the figures on the play field look a lot like the specters many ponies have seen around town. And as I look at the different figures on this pinball machine, the Pink winged unicorn by the crystal-looking city, and the little purple dragon, I'm left to wonder where exactly this machine did come from....